Thursday, 14 August 2014

The Smoke That Flutters....

There is a rather hushed and subdued atmosphere
hanging over this little fjord that I have come to know and love so well.

Some weather has just drifted over us, I say drifted,
perhaps steamrollered is more appropriate.

When the weather hits you in this neck of the woods it
really kicks you in the ass. The cloud that now hangs like a low grey ceiling
has just deposited a new layer of snow on the hills that flank the fjord.
Everything is now black and white or a grey in between these two opposites. The
wind has dropped from squally gasps to breathless. All is still on Lille
Porsanger.

You might expect the next line to read “there wasn’t a
sound” and true, the cloud is muffling things, but the fjord is by no means
silent.

Behind me the river that is carrying melt water from
the flanking hills gently gurgles away as it flows through a narrow neck. As it
reaches the wide, shallow fjord it slows and quietens like an excited theatre
crowd hushed as the curtain goes up. To my right there is the metronomic drip,
drip, drip of melting ice that I am standing next to on the edge of the
marsh that fringes the mudflats.

The soft dove-grey coloured mudflats, dotted with
boulders and matted with deep brown patches of bladder wrack are starting to be
covered by a slow, silent tide.

The atmosphere in the Porsanger Expedition team
mirrors this greyness. We are waiting for Knots to survey and they are late. We
have been in country for 5 days and despite much scouring of this fjord and the
much larger Porsangerfjord we haven’t found big numbers of our shorebird
quarry. Our notebooks are sparsely scribbled in, not much data can be collected
if there aren’t any birds. I think doubts that they are going to turn up at all
are starting to creep into some of the minds in the team.

I shuffle around on the spot, trying to keep warm. I
push pebbles around with my shoes; the squelchy rasp of wet stone on wet stone
is quite loud in this muted monochrome. All we can do is wait.

A White-tailed Eagle soars silently over the fjord. On
the marsh a lone Redshank calls once then falls silent. I look around. A
defiant birch sapling is poking through the just fallen snow.

The grey cloud seems to be lifting slightly. A huge
powdery “crump” sound from the northward mountain breaks the quiet. Another
avalanche. Spring is coming and that means melting snow which triggers regular
big falls of fresh powder.

We wait. We wait. We wait. We wait.

Then…

Fresh from the Waddensea they drop from the thinning
clouds. They cut through the greyness and Lille Porsanger turns red.

They bring with them the sun, they must have been
riding the coat tails of the weather front that just blasted through and dusted
us with snow.

Thousands and thousands pour in, squawking and spiraling
to the fjord. Swirling like bonfire smoke, 34,000 wings louder than the
avalanches, as loud as a waterfall, as loud as Victoria Falls - the smoke that
thunders. It is a truly magical sight. We should never have doubted them. The
mental email I was quietly drafting to our sponsors explaining that the birds
simply didn’t arrive is quickly deleted. I look around, the team is beaming.
Smiles turn to wide mouthed astonishment as 17,000 Red Knot appear before us.
The birds are noisy but we are stunned into silence.

Description of this spectacle is beyond me.

We can go to work. Over the next few days we follow
the flock, careful not to disturb it, recording its size, location behaviour
and collecting sightings of colour ringed individuals. This is important for
our research but it is also the most enjoyable pursuit. I get to spend time in close
quarters with Calidris canutus. Watching, recording, photographing.
Thousands and thousands of them in the Porsanger flock….